The posting and sharing of image and video content is a major trend in social media, and it is growing rapidly along with the expanding audio and video processing capability offered by mobile devices and cloud services. The proliferation of smart phones, tablets and other mobile, networked devices with high quality cameras and audio capture has given rise to new forms of social media, built around the sharing of pictures and video. This trend will undoubtedly grow, fueled by users' insatiable desire to share their experiences and creativity immediately with others, expanding their social influence and having the experience of others amplify their own.
Mobile device users are particularly intent on sharing experiences when they are enjoying themselves with others at events, such as concerts, shows, parties, etc. For example, it is typical to witness several attendees of a concert capturing video of the experience on their smart phones and immediately sharing it that video with friends. Because these participants in these types of events naturally share a community of interest with each other, they tend to want to further connect with others at the event through social media. Merely sharing one's experience with existing friends is insufficient, as the desire is to enhance enjoyment by connecting with new friends and learning others' reactions and input to an event that they are experiencing together (e.g., in real-time). Others have similar interests and can share perspectives on something of common interest.
Yet, there is a lack of an efficient means to manage and build that community of interest around such experiences. Attendees can share the experience with other friends connected via their social network or social graph. But there is little opportunity, without further searching on the part of the user, to see what perspective and content others captured and provided for the event.
One inventive embodiment is a method that includes receiving an item of content captured by an electronic device associated with a user; obtaining information extracted from the received item of captured content; and, by reference to the obtained information, correlating the received item of captured content with at least one of: at least one other item of captured content, at least one item metadata associated with the at least one other item of captured content, and at least one item of metadata associated with the information extracted from the received item of captured content.
Another inventive embodiment is a method that includes receiving an item of content captured by an electronic device associated with a user; obtaining information extracted from the received item of captured content; and, by reference to the obtained information, aggregating data associated with at least one of: the obtained information; and at least one item of metadata associated with the obtained information.
Yet another inventive embodiment is a method that includes receiving, at a network system configured to render at least one network service to posted items of content, an item of posted content captured by an electronic device associated with a user; obtaining information extracted from the received item of posted content; by reference to the obtained information, making a determination as to at least one service to be rendered in regards to the received item of posted content; and rendering the at least one determined service to the received item of posted content based on the determination.
Still another inventive embodiment is a method that includes processing an item of content to extract a first digital watermark layer from the item of content; and, by reference to the extracted first digital watermark, embedding a second digital watermark layer into the item of content.
A variety of social media and network services may be made available to users that give them access to the uploaded content and aggregated metadata for an event. This enables users to get an enhanced presentation of the event as experienced by others at the event and augmented by additional metadata obtained from the network.
In certain configurations, content fingerprints and context information provided by the user's mobile device may also be used to correlate uploads relating to an event from several users. The various trade-offs and complementary features afforded by using watermarking and/or fingerprinting are described further below.
Various aspect of the inventions disclosed in this document are recited in claim sets at the end of this document. Further inventions, and various configurations for combining them, are described in more detail in the description that follows. As such, further inventive features will become apparent with reference to the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.